Spoilers ahoy, read at your own risk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This game is very similar to Grandia 3 in that it's a game about flying that is not about flying. You're supposed to have a sky pirate and a boy who wants to be one, except you spend 99% of the game on foot. This also leads to some bizarre technology gap I mentioned before, namely the aerial technology vastly beats anything you can do on foot but it never occurs to anyone that they just need some Remora class fighters to put the Resistance dead at its tracks. It isn't particularly important, but I do not think a game should advertise itself about flying when the game has nothing to do with flying. Even if it's somewhat superficial, Skies of Arcadia does revolve around flying. Even Grandia 3 pretended you fly even though it's really a slow way of walking. In FF12 flying is limited to cutscenes where the Strahl decloaks and a few select scens.
Next, I think this quote sum up the strengths and the weaknesses of the game very well: "The Reins of History shall be returned to the hands of Men." This covers Dr. Cid and Balthier, who are by far the two most well developed characters by far. They are definitely the game's strong points. But it also illustrates the weaknesses. Who are we taking the Reins of History from? The Occurians? But they just stand in Giruvegan (by far the worst dungeon ever) around doing nothing all day. It'd appear the Reins of History need to be wrestled from the 10 species of Malboro and 8 species of Cats that exist in Ivalice. In a game that focuses around politics, you act more as the Resistance's elite pest extermination squad as you spend almost all your time fighting stuff that are neither human nor related to the Occurians.
Similar to FFT, this game has too many characters, many of them potentially cool, but you never hear about them. I'm not even sure what significance Penelo, Fran, or Vaan has in the story. Perhaps they are meant to be the player's eyes because they sure don't do anything important. For that matter Ashe doesn't do anything important besides picking up the Sword of Kings/Treaty Blade. From a story point of view it wouldn't surprise me if Balthier and Basch are the only two characters that existed for the Resistance side (and bring Ashe in when you need to grab something that requires divine ascent). The same applies to the villians. Did Vayne even do anything important? What happened to the Boba Fett clone? The Judges are supposed to be the major villians (Gabranth picture is on FF12) but only 2 of them ever did anything imporatnt, story-wise, and one of them isn't even part of the original 5. Again if you got rid of all the Judges but Gabranth and Zecht, the game would still be just as complete. In fact the game would almost certainly have been better since Gabranth and Zecht actually have a personality as opposed to none (Darce, Bargth), stupid (Ghis), or invisible (Zargboth).
Frankly, there's too much character development spread out on a lot of characters that are simply lost causes. It's not too bad on the good guys, but some characters still suffer less airtime then they should have. On the villian side, most of them are atrociously underdeveloped, with the only exception being Doctor Cid. You can easily argue until Doctor Cid shows up, you basically don't even have a vilian to fight against (the earlier Judges are too underdeveloped to be considered as a villian).
I like a lot of the guys on your side. Some are downright cool, like Zecht and Balthier, but the real lack of an enemy makes the whole thing rather meaningless. Aside from Doctor Cid FF12 has by far the most invisible villians ever. I wasn't not even sure if the last Star Wars Death Star attack is even necessary because it sems like Resistance was going to steamrolled the empire anyway. I mean, they attacked head on and only suffered some losses until the Wedge clone guy took out the anti-air batteries, and the main cannon on the Bahamut can't fire repeatedly anyway because the power source was already destroyed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This game is very similar to Grandia 3 in that it's a game about flying that is not about flying. You're supposed to have a sky pirate and a boy who wants to be one, except you spend 99% of the game on foot. This also leads to some bizarre technology gap I mentioned before, namely the aerial technology vastly beats anything you can do on foot but it never occurs to anyone that they just need some Remora class fighters to put the Resistance dead at its tracks. It isn't particularly important, but I do not think a game should advertise itself about flying when the game has nothing to do with flying. Even if it's somewhat superficial, Skies of Arcadia does revolve around flying. Even Grandia 3 pretended you fly even though it's really a slow way of walking. In FF12 flying is limited to cutscenes where the Strahl decloaks and a few select scens.
Next, I think this quote sum up the strengths and the weaknesses of the game very well: "The Reins of History shall be returned to the hands of Men." This covers Dr. Cid and Balthier, who are by far the two most well developed characters by far. They are definitely the game's strong points. But it also illustrates the weaknesses. Who are we taking the Reins of History from? The Occurians? But they just stand in Giruvegan (by far the worst dungeon ever) around doing nothing all day. It'd appear the Reins of History need to be wrestled from the 10 species of Malboro and 8 species of Cats that exist in Ivalice. In a game that focuses around politics, you act more as the Resistance's elite pest extermination squad as you spend almost all your time fighting stuff that are neither human nor related to the Occurians.
Similar to FFT, this game has too many characters, many of them potentially cool, but you never hear about them. I'm not even sure what significance Penelo, Fran, or Vaan has in the story. Perhaps they are meant to be the player's eyes because they sure don't do anything important. For that matter Ashe doesn't do anything important besides picking up the Sword of Kings/Treaty Blade. From a story point of view it wouldn't surprise me if Balthier and Basch are the only two characters that existed for the Resistance side (and bring Ashe in when you need to grab something that requires divine ascent). The same applies to the villians. Did Vayne even do anything important? What happened to the Boba Fett clone? The Judges are supposed to be the major villians (Gabranth picture is on FF12) but only 2 of them ever did anything imporatnt, story-wise, and one of them isn't even part of the original 5. Again if you got rid of all the Judges but Gabranth and Zecht, the game would still be just as complete. In fact the game would almost certainly have been better since Gabranth and Zecht actually have a personality as opposed to none (Darce, Bargth), stupid (Ghis), or invisible (Zargboth).
Frankly, there's too much character development spread out on a lot of characters that are simply lost causes. It's not too bad on the good guys, but some characters still suffer less airtime then they should have. On the villian side, most of them are atrociously underdeveloped, with the only exception being Doctor Cid. You can easily argue until Doctor Cid shows up, you basically don't even have a vilian to fight against (the earlier Judges are too underdeveloped to be considered as a villian).
I like a lot of the guys on your side. Some are downright cool, like Zecht and Balthier, but the real lack of an enemy makes the whole thing rather meaningless. Aside from Doctor Cid FF12 has by far the most invisible villians ever. I wasn't not even sure if the last Star Wars Death Star attack is even necessary because it sems like Resistance was going to steamrolled the empire anyway. I mean, they attacked head on and only suffered some losses until the Wedge clone guy took out the anti-air batteries, and the main cannon on the Bahamut can't fire repeatedly anyway because the power source was already destroyed.
